Countries With the Lowest Informal Employment

Every country with a figure for informal employment, ranked from lowest to highest. The top three are Malta (0.63%), Slovenia (0.7%) and Croatia (1.17%). The middle country of the 142 has 56%.

What this measures

Share of employment that is informal, in % of employment. Source: International Labour Organization. For this measure, higher is worse.

Workers with no contract, no social protection or no registered employer, as the ILO (the UN's labour agency) makes them comparable across national labour force surveys. The World Bank's copy of this series was retired, so it comes from the UN's database for the Sustainable Development Goals.

This measure mostly follows how rich a country is, so this ranking is close to a ranking by national income. Each country’s page also ranks it against countries with similar incomes, which is often the fairer comparison.

The full ranking

Each country’s latest figure, from 2012–2025. The year beside each value says when it was measured.

More on informal employment

• Countries With the Highest Informal Employment
• Informal employment by country: trend over time and what it goes with

Related rankings

• Countries With the Lowest Active Labour Market Spending
• Countries With the Lowest Unemployment Benefit Spending
• Countries With the Lowest Retirement Age, Men
• Countries With the Lowest Retirement Age, Women
• Countries With the Lowest Hours Worked
• Countries With the Lowest Unemployment
• Countries With the Lowest Female Labor Participation
• Countries With the Lowest Male Labor Participation

A ranking describes countries, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All country rankings.